Inspiration Can Come From the Most Unlikely of Places

One of the things I find ridiculous is when a dictionary, whether online or in an actual book, use the very word they are defining in the definition.  For example, recently I came across an AP news story about how the CEO of BP was being raked over the coals because of how his company is handling the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  The term the author of the article used was "pilloried."  Obviously this is a word that is not used very often.  And I have to admit, before seeing it in this article I have never heard it before.  So, in order to understand what they were saying I turned to this fancy thing called "the internet" to find out what this word means.